Liberatory Antagonisms in Labor and Cultural Production in Central Asia

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel takes a broad approach to analyzing the possibilities and limits of liberation in different contexts within Central Asian societies/temporalties. This interdisciplinary panel uses methods and debates centered on race and blackness, from history, anthropology and ethnomusicology, to think about the various antagonisms that occur within multi-ethnic/multi-racial cultural exchanges and dialogues. A'Yanna Solomon's presentation will contend with rap music as a socially transgressive tool towards liberation. Solomon's presentation examines works from Qazaq rapper Aydin Nuralin's discography to explore the ways his depictions of violence and sexual explicitness transgresses ideas of social decency. John Seitz’s paper, “Labor, Race and Ethnicity in the Energy Industries of Late Imperial Kazakhstan'', explores the ways that labor, race, and ethnicity intersected in the oil and coal industries of Kazakhstan in the early 20th century. In the process of extracting energy from the ground, global corporations deployed an array of different groups from Kazakhs and Russian settlers to technicians from the Hapsburg empire as well as managers and engineers from Russian and European metropoles. Alexa Kurmanov's paper, "Performing ‘American Blackness’ in Central Asian Cultural Production", examines the Kazakh YouTube series Appaq Kelin, which surrounds the life of Kamazhai and her new Kelin Leah, a Black American woman, and the small dramas that ensue in Kamazhai’s village after Leah's arrival. This examination of Appaq Kelin will invite further inquiry into how notions of Blackness and co-optation of “Black diasporic resources” (Nassey-Brown 2005) recreate spatial difference– “imaginary west” in contrast to the Kazakh village (Yurchak 2005).

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Clare Griffin, Indiana U Bloomington

Papers

• 'To Die on a Different Day': Rap Music as Transgressive Art in Qazaqstan - A'Yanna Solomon, Indiana U Bloomington

• Labor, Race, and Ethnicity in the Energy Industries of Late Imperial Kazakhstan - John Britton Seitz, Tennessee Wesleyan U

• Appaq Kelin: 'American Blackness' in the Kazazh Cultural Production - Alexa L Kurmanov, UC Berkeley

Discussant

• Chelsi West Ohueri, U of Texas at Austin